In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.
BORIS PASTERNAKAt the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.
More Boris Pasternak Quotes
-
-
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
In this era of world wars, in this atomic age, values have changed. We have learned that we are guests of existence, travelers between two stations. We must discover security within ourselves.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Salvation lies not in the faithfulness to forms, but in the liberation from them.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Mother Russia is on the move, she can’t stand still, she’s restless and can’t find rest, she’s talking and she can’t stop.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Yet the order of the acts is planned And the end of the way inescapable. I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
That’s metaphysics, my dear fellow. It’s forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won’t take it.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Failure to love is almost like murder.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
I used to be very revolutionary, but now I think that nothing can be gained by brute force. People must be drawn to good by goodness.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?
BORIS PASTERNAK -
The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
What for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Art is unthinkable without risk and spiritual self-sacrifice.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
A corner draft fluttered the flame And the white fever of temptation Upswept its angel wings that cast A cruciform shadow.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
Our evenings are farewells. Our parties are testaments. So that the secret stream of suffering. May warm the cold of life.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
The last moments slipped by, one by one, irretrievable.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
No bad man can be a good poet.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience. Life has grown too cumbersome, too complicated. We have acquired values which are best expressed in prose.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
The whole of life is symbolic because the whole of it has meaning.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
We must discover security within ourselves.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
They don’t ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.
BORIS PASTERNAK -
The whole wide world is a cathedral; I stand inside, the air is calm, And from afar at times there reaches My ear the echo of a psalm.
BORIS PASTERNAK